Instead of recognizing that the political implications of the income redistribution of globalized capitalism made Sanders and Trump the only two valid candidates, the leading commentators did the very opposite: they asserted in tones of unassailable certainty that both men were irremediably unelectable. That was, admittedly, a perfectly reasonable conclusion, given that neither happened to have a party to support them, which was then still considered the presumed prerequisite of electoral victories. And it was also true enough that Sanders could not hope for party support because of the professional contempt of with-it Democratic officials for the ageing socialist, who stubbornly failed to recognize the absolute centrality of identity politics in the third millennium, and who therefore persisted in talking of rich and poor, instead of African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Aleuts, Asian-Americans, LGBT Americans, even white ones, if quietly.

Luttwak also faults the GOP leadership for its blindness to what has actually happened in the United States in the post-Reagan era, regarding deindustrialization, thus paving the way forward for Trump.

Contemplating the fragility and intellectual decline of both parties is unavoidable for readers of Mark Lilla’s forthcoming book The Once And Future Liberal, which will be in bookstores on August 15. I read it in one sitting this weekend — a tribute to its ability to engage the reader, but also to its length. This polemical book is short, only 141 pages, but this is a virtue. It’s exactly as long as it needs to be. Though it’s a book written by a liberal Democrat for liberal Democrats, every conservative who cares about the future of American politics should read it. Somebody on the Right — I’m looking at you, Michael Brendan Dougherty — needs to pen a similar volume for our side.

I’ll be conducting and publishing and interview with Lilla later this week, and I expect to write a few posts about it, because there’s so much there to unpack. But for now, a few opening thoughts.

The thesis of Liberal is that the Democratic Party, and liberalism in general, has shipwrecked itself on the shoals of identity politics. “We have been repudiated in no uncertain terms,” he writes. “Donald Trump the man is, frankly, not the greatest of our worries. And if we don’t look beyond him there is very little hope for us.”

Lilla, who teaches humanities at Columbia, continues:

American liberalism in the twenty-first century is in crisis: a crisis of imagination and ambition on our side, a crisis of attachment and trust on the other side of the wider public.

The book is dedicated to diagnosing that crisis and prescribing a cure. Lilla describes himself as a “frustrated American liberal.” He begins by saying that since Reagan, the core strength of the GOP has been that it has been able to produce “an image of what our shared way of life might be.” Liberalism has not, he claims — not even under its two recent presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Technocratic liberalism is not a compelling vision.

Lilla says that American political history of the last century contains two “dispensations” — a term meaning “system of order” related to a particular time. The Roosevelt Dispensation was a time that focused on collective responsibility for each other, against economic hardship, and later, against racial injustice and similar wrongs. By the end of the 1970s, this dispensation petered out with stagnation and failure. The Reagan Dispensation was the political response. It focused on individualism and self-reliance. In the first dispensation, government was a solution. In the second, government was a problem.

Lilla argues that liberalism failed to articulate a new vision of what America should be like based on what unites Americans. Instead, it gave itself over to identity politics, which “became the de facto creed of two generations of liberal politicians, professors, schoolteachers, journalists, movement activists, and officials of the Democratic Party.” Ironically, says Lilla, this only reinforced the core principle of Reaganism: individualism.

Lilla:

The main result has been to turn young people back onto themselves, rather than turning them outward toward the wider world. It has left them unprepared to think about the common good and what must be done practically to secure it — especially the hard and unglamorous task of persuading people very different from themselves to join a common effort. Every advance of liberal identity consciousness has marked a retreat of liberal political consciousness. Without which no vision of Americans’ future can be imagined.

Lilla says Democrats keep losing not because they have drifted too far to the left or to the right. “They are losing because they have retreated into caves they have carved for themselves in the side of what once was a great mountain.”

Lilla has a knack for pithy, stinging phrasing. Look around, he says to fellow liberals, and see that the Republican Party, at the state level, dominates. They keep winning elections. They do so in large part because “they have successfully persuaded much of the public that they are the party of Joe Sixpack and Democrats are the party of Jessica Yogamat.”

If liberals really want to improve the lots of minorities within their broad coalition, they have to first win elections. But the way they think of politics all but guarantees that they won’t. Lilla visits the Democratic Party’s website, with its pages and pages for various identity constituencies, and moans, “You might think that, by some mistake, you have landed on the website of the Lebanese government — not that of a party with a vision of America’s future.” He writes:

Identity liberalism has ceased being a political project and has morphed into an evangelical one. The difference is this: evangelism is about speaking truth to power. Politics is about seizing power to defend the truth.

Lilla correctly sees this moment as a real opportunity for Democrats. Trump’s election marks the end of the Reagan Dispensation too, but the Republican Party has not come to terms with this fact. Yes, they hold power, but Trump is only nominally a Republican, and there is nobody in the party establishment articulating a compelling vision to address the problems and the conditions that empowered Trump to smash the establishment’s power. The future really is up for grabs. The Once And Future Liberal is a punchy, no-b.s. guide to how the Democrats can make the future their own.

I’ll be writing about it all week, so I don’t want to jam too much of the book into this one post. There’s a lot to chew over in it. I will say in this introductory post that I think this book is not going to be well-received on the Left, precisely because it assaults the sacred cow of identity politics. Most on the Left, I think, will interpret the book as saying that if they want to win power, they have to tell blacks, gays, and all the other subgroups to go to the back of the bus (the inevitable metaphor). Lilla does not say this at all. His argument, rather, is that if Democrats want to secure and advance rights for those groups (as he does), they are going to first have to start winning elections again. This they cannot do unless they come up with a real vision of solidarity, of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. My guess is that the leadership class within Democratic politics has come to think of identity politics as a kind of religion, such that to abandon it in any way feels like heresy. They won’t be able to confront honestly the argument Lilla makes because to do so would compel them to rethink radically the principles that give them their political identity.

I could be wrong. I hope I’m right, because if the Democrats take Lilla seriously, they will be a formidable opponent. The best thing from my point of view would be for Republicans to read this book, and to take its insights into how changing economic conditions are giving birth to a new, as yet undefined dispensation, and recreate the GOP to make it responsive to the world as it is.

There is no going back to a pre-Trump era, for either party. The future is not Hillary Clinton, or the class of Democrats she represents. The long-term future of the GOP is not Donald Trump, but neither is it any of the creatures of the Republican establishment that Trump demolished in the 2016 primaries.

I have my doubts that either party can confidently and meaningfully claim to be the party of American solidarity, for reasons I’ll get into later this week, as we talk about Lilla’s must-read new book.

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137 Responses to Democrats: ‘The Party Of Jessica Yogamat’

“My guess is that the leadership class within Democratic politics has come to think of identity politics [as contrasted with “solidarity”] as a kind of religion, such that to abandon it in any way feels like heresy.”

Rod, can you explain the contrast. To me (and I only know regular Democrats and local election machinery folks) protecting LGBT people, racial, religious, and ethnic minorities from harm while trying to make the economy work better for the bottom 99% IS solidarity. Democrats are not Manicheans. The outcome of politics is not a zero-sum problem. Protecting minorities done well — “technocratic liberalism” — does not harm majorities. Republicans may have successfully sold the idea that the interests of Joe Six Pack and Jessica Yogamat conflict, but that does not make it true.

Actual Republican politics, on the other hand, does seem to me to rest on the assumption that there is a great host of “them” — takers not makers — out to take our stuff.

To the extent that one of the three is allowed to become ascendant the other two invariably suffer.
The mistake of liberalism was to assume that these three could be maintained in some sort of harmony for the long term.

In our era it seems that liberty is being filtered through equality, so to speak, and fraternity is pushed off to one side in the process. While conservatives can applaud the effort of liberals like Lilla who seek to restore the equilibrium, we must recognize the ultimate futility of the attempt. Given human nature and the absence of a common conception of the good, the three legs of the stool will never be in balance for long, and tyranny can eventually develop no matter which way it leans.

‘I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again: it’s time to Negotiate. The. Divorce.

Re-federate the country. Joe Sixpack can have his America; Jessica Yogamat can have hers. They can deal with each other through treaty negotiations like the rest of the world.

There’s no point in trying to save a marriage turned toxic and abusive. End it. Let each other go.’

I understand the frustration.

I am frustrated that a very high percentage of core Republicans (the Trump base, which is what I see at this point is the Republican core) have a visceral distaste for science, facts in general, the aggressive role of religion (i.e. radical evangelism) in politics, the non-reality (not) of climate change, the political leverage afforded the 1% in our political process, the failure of rank capitalism to provide adequate health care to 40 million Americans, and on and on.

But we cannot ‘divorce’. As much as I would like to see the strident red states (MO, AR, OK, NE, TX, etc) leave and be forced to provide for the own welfare, it isn’t going to happen. We are stuck with each other.

Tax breaks for the rich do not pay for themselves, and do not stimulate the economy (but tax breaks for the middle class do because the middle class spends the money, while the rich bank it).

Overseas military adventurism (thank you Dick Cheney and George Bush) does not make us safer, and will bankrupt us in the long run.

These are just a few of the facts that I see are indisputable, but remain in dispute. And I am sure I will get some responses that disagree with the above.

Is it because we all now see things in black and white? Have we lost the ability to understand complexity and nuance?

Let’s start be marginalizing those in the politics that offer simple solutions to complex problems. Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Laura Ingraham come to mind. For those on the right, insert your left-wing boogeyman here.

What will bring the political class back to the middle, and reject the extremes? Much of America seems to be there. Why aren’t our politicians?

Ah, here we go again about identity politics. As if equal rights were a pie…

So basically, championing equal rights makes some white people feel icky/angry/scared and people shouldn’t do that. This from the people who claim to love freedom and respect the Constitution.

No wonder Trump supporters got torqued when NPR tweeted the Declaration of Independence, and people got mad at Colin Kaepernick for protesting the National Anthem. The flowery language of the Declaration of Independence has only ever been promised to white people and everyone else should shut up. Got it.

I take it from your comments that you reject race-based preferences in all forms, and understand equality means equality, not legal preferences based on race, sex or ethnicity–which is, of course, legal supremacy.

In my experience, most whites object to non-white racial supremacists as well as to white supremacists. However, I think if they are going to be forced by circumstances into choosing one or the other, I suspect the majority will end up on the latter side. In other words, hardcore identitarian politics by minorities will inevitably create a hardcore identitarian politics by the majority. That is not what you want, right?

Ken T (Aug 7, 6:17 pm) makes a good distinction between liberalism and identity politics, making the key point that corporatists in both parties have pushed aside questions of economic justice in order to play cultural politics, which always has the benefit of riling up outrage and thus getting the base out to vote.

I would add that what unites liberalism and identity politics is that both focus on reducing cruelty. From their perspectives, conservatives, whether economic or cultural, are too willing to accept cruel social arrangements.

A point no one has yet made is that Rod and Lilla are nostalgic for a unity that was short-lived and not typical of the American experience. The unity experienced from 1940 to 1975 was created by a culture elite that worked hard to eliminate the elements that had created so much conflict in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Before WW2, corporations and the government violently suppressed the labor movement, race riots were typically white citizens destroying the homes and businesses of blacks, Asians, and Latinos, and the Klan terrorized Catholics as well as blacks.

During and after the war, cultural elites focused on creating unity, creating, for example, a new concept, the idea of a Judeo-Christian culture that responded not only to the Holocaust but also to anti-Catholicism. This unity was supported by a booming economy, a labor movement that improved working conditions and raised the real wages of ordinary laborers, an economic consensus that accepted the social contract of the New Deal, and a foreign policy consensus that focused on anti-communism.

Wendy Wall has written a good, readable history, “Inventing the American Way.”

The Marxist left has an answer, and they crucially include whites—men and women—in your list. Their answer is, class

Sure, in theory, but you are smart enough to know that ample historical experience shows this never works in liberal democracy, and “works” under authoritarian (often very brutal) rule until such rule collapses into peaceful partition at best, civil war at worst. The Soviet and Yugoslav commies failed to subsume ethnoreligious (tribal) identity under class solidarity. Class solidarity does not endear Tibetans and Uighurs to their Han commie overlords. Socialist pan-Arabism failed in the Middle East. Half a century of communist rule did not prevent Czechs and Slovaks from seeking a divorce once the Iron Curtain was drawn back. Kemalism (secular, social democratic) has run its course in Turkey.

I have sometimes come close to agreement with Anonne, and I may again before long, but here she is conflating several different things, held together by a matrix of anger that seems to obscure recognition of facts on the ground.

There are people with an over-weening pride in their congenital melanin deficiency, even though it has no more objective significance than the clarity of their left big toenail. They continue to choose to think of themselves as “white” and resent anyone else muscling in on their illusory monopoly. They have felt free to be a little louder during the Trump interregnum, but they are not exactly politically dominant. Still, their thought process is intrinsically evil. As individuals, many of them may think better of their delusion eventually.

I add the caveat that at least since the late 1700s, impoverished “white” people of low skills and/or denied access to capital have been thrown the sop “at least we white,” which makes them reflexively angry when they see people of African descent who followed Booker T. Washington’s advice, building farms and businesses, who thereby have emerged with a modest prosperity. Its a set-up all around.

There are ALSO people, mostly of an intellectual bent, who like to preen themselves on how “militant” they are or what “good friends of the Negro” they are (updated language, “people of color,” but it still reeks of patronizing self-love), who think the way to advance an increasingly nebulous and inchoate cause is to trample on the status of anyone who could be called “white.” For those in this milieu who think of themselves AS “white,” this inevitably involves a certain degree of masochism, and it seems they truly enjoy it.

I don’t worry a lot about the latter, because I live in an impoverished inner-city area and I know that people of African descent have more important things to worry about, and are more often than not willing to accept individuals at face value for what they do, not what they look like. There are acute incidents that provide a counter-point, but they are not dominant.

The terms “equality” and “equal rights” have been stretched and contorted over the past twenty years to the point that I will not reflexively endorse either term without clarification. Fundamentally, we are all entitled to “equality before the law” which means, fundamentally, that the law will treat people who are similarly situated in the same manner. E.g., a black-owned business pays the same license fee as a white-owned business or a Sikh-owned business or a Lebanese-owned business.

I’ve argued before that the “equality” argument for same sex marriage was unsound, even if licensing, regulating and taxing same sex couples is good public policy, which it may well be.

I’m kind of agnostic about Colin Kaepernick. I don’t object to his rather modest protest, nor do I enthusiastically support it. I do object to a qualified practitioner of any trade or sport being denied employment because of an expression of political opinion. I’ve been known to have some negative thoughts about ceremonial honoring of the American flag, but I also remember, this IS the flag that conquered the odious flag of the abortive confederacy.

It’s not about supremacy for minorities, but parity. Endorsing affirmative action in the current time does not mean supremacy or endorsing it for all time. It’s recognizing that there are systemic biases against people of color, and trying to correct for it in the short term so that it won’t have to happen in the long term. It really incenses me to hear white people cry about victimization when they irrefutably still have the lion’s share of benefits. It’s only a few white people on the margins who may get shafted. Like 80ish% of college admissions isn’t good enough? Do they even think about how that sounds?

White people supposedly of good conscience should not be threatened by Black Lives Matter’s stance against police brutality, but they are. That makes me question how good their conscience is. From the foundation of this country, politics has ever been about white identity politics. White identity politics was written into the Constitution, codified into law at the federal and state level. But those easily upset by “identity politics” don’t see it that way, they are blind to that history because it suits them, it benefits them – they don’t have to do anything that makes them uncomfortable to make things right. As MLK said in his letter from a Birmingham Jail, these people prefer the order that comes with a negative peace that is the absence of tension rather than a positive peace that is the presence of justice.

The argument is also logically extending to people of varying sexuality. Someone’s sexual preference does not define who they are or their contribution to society, or rather it should not. Why should we lose translators, engineers, law enforcement professionals in the military because someone thinks that the person’s sex life is icky? Or because they are Muslim, Sikh or some other non-Judeo Christian faith?

The apocalyptic language, treating this as if it is a clash of civilizations is the irresponsible fuel for conflict. Things are actually not that bad because “the blacks” are not coming for your homes, “the government” isn’t coming for your guns, “the Mexicans” aren’t coming for your job or to rape you/your women. But there is this escalation of fear and paranoia that is wholly unnecessary, not for people of good conscience.

Mark: I just don’t see it as possible, logistically. Where the heck do you draw the borders? […] Who takes the military? Who takes the debt?

My preferred option isn’t a full dissolution of the U.S. but a re-federation i.e. hard federalism. A delegation of most domestic legal authority and responsibility back to the state governments. The federal government would continue to exist but in a much smaller form, continuing to be responsible for defense, foreign policy, a certain amount of law enforcement, and extant national financial matters like the debt. State borders would be as they are now.

A full dissolution would obviously be a lot messier, require much more negotiation, and take a lot longer.

What do you do with the people who ideologically incompatible with the new border? Do you kick all the liberals out of Texas to California and all the conservatives out of California to Texas?

Such people would have a choice to make. They’d have to decide what they value more: their local attachments or their ideology. If the latter, then, ideally, they’d relocate themselves to a state whose culture and legal system better aligned with their beliefs. If the former, they’d have made their choice understanding the consequences and thus accepted the tradeoff. They could always leave later.

This is even less feasible than California breaking away.

There is no 100% clean, win-win solution. But, IMO, re-federating the country—i.e. delegating most domestic policy back to the states—would end the abusive, toxic cycle of Blue America and Red America forcibly trying to subjugate and convert each other. It would also provide political and legal recognition of the fact that we’re not one nation or one society anymore, but two (at least). We have different norms and values, different concepts of right and wrong, and different ideas about the nature of reality. Too different from each other to continue co-existing under a single, comprehensive, one-size-fits-all federal regime.

Long-term peace requires that we recognize our ideological and cultural heterogeneity and adjust our legal and political institutions to reflect that. In other words, we need to respect our differences and delegate power and authority accordingly.

You make the old error of conflating “Marxism” with “Communism” which is the exact equivalent of conflating, say, Lutheranism with Christianity in toto. Communism is a development (and IMO, a corrupt and dangerous one) from Marxism but it certainly does not represent that all of it.
And no, I am not a Marxist myself (for one thing I disagree vehemently with Marx’s critique of religion), but I do think Marx had some strong insights into how societies tend to evolve– and decay– as they age. However he also followed a metaphysic (Hegelianism) that I regard as tedious nonsense and his “prophesies” about the dictatorship of the Proletariat, the withering of the State etc. border on the crackpot.

Anonne: It’s not about supremacy for minorities, but parity. Endorsing affirmative action in the current time does not mean supremacy or endorsing it for all time. It’s recognizing that there are systemic biases against people of color, and trying to correct for it in the short term so that it won’t have to happen in the long term.

The problem with this line of thinking is the implicit assumption that “privilege”—as defined by critical race theory and intersectionality—is objectively quantifiable* and, furthermore, that there is some abstract, ideal equilibrium of privilege among the races that is both definable and achievable.

*As intersectionals are wont to point out, privilege is not the same as income/wealth so the dollar value thereof doesn’t count. If they were the same, poor white people wouldn’t be considered to have more privilege than poor minorities.

VikingLS: That is why I limited the point to police brutality. I am not asking anyone to agree with the rest of it, nice try at moving the goal post.

amhixson: Privilege isn’t the same as income/wealth. A wealthy black person is still subject to dehumanizing treatment on sight by police, maybe even moreso than a poor white person. See, e.g., driving while black. That’s been borne out through generations of lived experience. There is a difference between merely being harassed or getting an ass kicking and being lynched. Privilege may not be something you can reduce down to numbers but it’s fairly easy to see. But there are none so blind as those who will not see.

The commenter to whom I was responding said that class identity was the only one which matters in politics. Reading that, I instantly thought of Marx’ famous quote: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Nonsense then, nonsense now.

You make the old error of conflating “Marxism” with “Communism” which is the exact equivalent of conflating, say, Lutheranism with Christianity in toto

Oh, brother. Bad analogy. Communism is not a subset, a permutation of Marxism in the manner that Lutheranism is a subset or permutation of Christianity. Communism is the goal of Marxism. Marx and Engels didn’t write The Marxist Manifesto, but The Communist Manifesto. It’s as if you are saying, “You are conflating salvation through Jesus Christ with Christianity.”

Anonne: White people supposedly of good conscience should not be threatened by Black Lives Matter’s stance against police brutality, but they are.
VikingLS: NOBODY who has been to that organization’s website would buy this argument. BLM has a lot more on its agenda than police brutality.
Anonne: VikingLS: That is why I limited the point to police brutality. I am not asking anyone to agree with the rest of it, nice try at moving the goal post.

Well, if the point is limited to police brutality, then that limitation also removes the reason many white people of good conscience are threatened by Black Lives Matter.

However, many whites (and others) are experienced enough to know that that kind limitation — while potentially valid for the purposes of an internet discussion — doesn’t really hold in the real world.

Unfortunately I can’t support its program. Maybe we need two or three American Solidarity Parties. We could call one the Federalist Solidarity Party and another the Whig Solidarity Party. Then we probably need either a Socialist or People’s Solidarity Party.

Noah… it is absolutely true that history is much more complex than a cursory reading of Marx’s writing recognizes. I’m not sure how much Marx understood and how much he has been misunderstood, but a good deal of Marxist theory and practice to date has been rigid and impervious to new data. Which is not the same as lining myself up with Karl Kautskey, I was ROFL at Lenin’s polemic about Kautsky.

But, it is also not true that there is no such thing as classes, or that class warfare does not exist, or play a significant role in the world. Booker T. Washington’s advice that newly freed slaves should put off demands for social equality, and voting rights, work at getting education, skills, accumulating capital, starting businesses, etc. could have worked IF 19th century American “white” society has been a homogenous, classless world. It was not, it was riven with hot class conflicts.

One result was, successful black businessmen who attended church every Sunday and spoke the King’s English with impeccable courtesy were NOT met by “white society” with cheerful recognition that “they’re becoming more civilized.” Rather, down and out “white” people became incensed that “those n****s have more than I do” and found that while the Rockefellers and Carnegies were impervious to assault, nobody would interfere if they went after the successful black business owner.

That was class conflict in action. It just wasn’t the sort of class conflict that stirs the blood while the red banners wave and the band plays the Internationale. Real life is messy.

Annone is right about police brutality. Viking is right about Black Lives Matter (TM). I actually wasn’t watching so I didn’t see who moved the goal posts. Black lives do matter (lower case, not incorporated).

There needs to be an end point to affirmative action, but most of the objections being made now were made when it was first instituted. I don’t indulge conversations about “privilege,” they are a swamp full of unrecognized alligators. I don’t have time to check what’s in my navel, I have real work to do.

But, there is a real basis to affirmative action, and its not all worked out yet. The impact of centuries of different social and legal constructs that did seriously disadvantage some populations have long term consequences in terms of accumulation of social and financial capital and transmission between generations. The solutions aren’t as simple as “put more black bodies into college,” but there remain some real imbalances to work on.

My preferred option isn’t a full dissolution of the U.S. but a re-federation i.e. hard federalism. A delegation of most domestic legal authority and responsibility back to the state governments. The federal government would continue to exist but in a much smaller form, continuing to be responsible for defense, foreign policy, a certain amount of law enforcement, and extant national financial matters like the debt. State borders would be as they are now.

In other words, you want to go back to the Articles of Confederation. Which were already tried, and failed, at a time when the states were still much less interconnected than they are now; and still accustomed to thinking of themselves as separate, independent colonies rather than as one country. If it didn’t work then, the thought that it could work now is ridiculous.

Re: Oh, brother. Bad analogy. Communism is not a subset, a permutation of Marxism in the manner that Lutheranism is a subset or permutation of Christianity.

Yes it is. Communism (as you reference it) is one of the 20th century movements that came out Marx’s 19th century philosophy. It is certainly not the only one (see: Democratic Socialism), and the specifics of its evolution, as with everything in the real world, were conditioned by the accidents of history–nothing abstract survives an encounter with the hard fact of life without scars and bruises. Imagine an alternate reality in which Lenin died of whopping cough in his cradle, and Stalin continued in the seminary and became a priest and Trotsky rotted in a tsarist prison camp. What then would Communism be? Would there even have been a USSR?
For that matter even in the 19th century Marx found the movement that bore his name so different from what he intended that at one point he protested “I am not a Marxist”.

James Hartwick: Long before BLM got a .com and metastasized into something bigger, white people were resistant to Black Lives Matter and it still goes on. It happens every time white people start searching for ways to smear the character of victims of police brutality, fundamentally undercutting the protections enshrined in our Constitution.

It manifested itself first as “All Lives Matter,” a.k.a. Shut Up and Ignore the Status Quo, and it too has metastasized into “Blue Lives Matter,” as if the American police are a historically oppressed people being put down by blacks and other minorities. Funny thing about that is that most of the people actually killing cops are white, but blacks are the ones scapegoated for it, to keep gun sales up.

In our Constitution, it doesn’t matter if you’re a junkie, if you got caught smoking weed once in high school, if you did some petty crime, or if you were mouthy at a traffic stop. Or not any of that (see, e.g., Philando Castile, Tamir Rice, John Crawford III, Rekia Boyd, Amadou Diallou, and so many more). You have a right to not be summarily executed for moving the wrong way while not white.

BLM probably wouldn’t have expanded into what it is if whites didn’t work so hard to disregard black humanity and ignore the injustice that police are allowed to get away with doing.

Siarlys: we need a parliamentary system in order for third and fourth parties to work. Like every other democracy we have assisted, none of them have chosen an electoral college to determine their representation. A parliamentary system would allow for more robust party participation and the necessity of forging real alliances to get things done. It also removes the veneer of illegitimacy of one person winning a popular vote by a significant margin and still losing overall.

Anonne, I don’t quite see that we MUST have a parliamentary system. The two party “system” was created by collusion of the Democratic and Republican parties when their duopoly was being seriously challenged by the Populist and Socialist parties. The Republican Party initially emerged as a third party; having third parties emerge and displace established parties is no bad thing, even if things generally settle down to two parties. The Whigs emerged in a vacuum after the collapse of the Federalists left the Democratic-Republicans as the ONLY party. Our constitution was not written with a view toward parties emerging at all, but they did.

The electoral college is an anachronism, but I’ve seen enough argument about functions it fulfills (not that these were originally intended) that I’d think carefully about how to abolish or replace it. Given what has “just grown” over the past 200 years, I favor a compressed 4-6 month series of primaries, with the order of each state’s primary chosen by lottery, followed by a popular vote election among the top four candidates from the primaries over all, with an order of preference ballot. This would allow for regional expression and for people to formulate their opinions over time as different states vote, then a final vote that arrives at a reasonable consensus of what people can live with. I think the final four might have come down in 2016 to Trump, Sanders, Clinton, and Cruz, or maybe Johnson.

In an order of preference ballot, if your first choice finishes last, there is a recount with your ballot redistributed to your second choice, until one candidate has an absolute majority.

I think 3-4 parties, in which one of them holds the presidency, and all of them have representation in congress, would reinforce the separation of powers. A parliamentary system would not, since the executive IS the leader of the majority party.

There are people who continue to choose to think of themselves as “white” who object to the very notion that “black lives matter.” Some of them push “blue lives matter,” but then, so do people who are genuinely and reasonably concerned when police officers with no record of mistreating civilians are randomly assassinated. I have a good friend who retired from the DC police force. She was in deep mourning for her comrades killed in Dallas. I’m sure she also knows that some among her comrades might pull over and abuse or kill her college graduate son because all they see is his color.

So its a little more complicated these days than pro-black, anti-black, pro-police, anti-police, etc. Its true that most of the police killings this year have been committed by people with a congenital melanin deficiency — which police officers might want to consider before they consider pulling over a black motorist to be ipso facto “high risk.” But the “white” killers are just trying to get away with a felony, while the high profile “black” killers last year were deliberately targeting police for being police, not in the midst of a getaway.

In the instances where police have been brought to trial, and acquitted, I really think what needs to be emphasized is a very small but essential legal point: there is such a thing as acting in the honest, but unreasonable, belief your life is in danger. If I walk down the street, with a loaded firearm, that I am legally authorized to have in my possession out on the street, and I THINK someone coming toward me intends to kill me, shoot them, then find out, oh, I was wrong, I misinterpreted their hand movement and they didn’t have a weapon at all… that is a felony. Not intentional homicide, but something like negligent homicide. My honest error doesn’t excuse killing someone, although it is a mitigating circumstance in the degree of homicide and the length of my sentence.

That isn’t being adequately applied to, or argued in, prosecutions of police officers who kill civilians. Its still a far cry from the days when juries would acquit in five minutes and then the judge would take the officer out to lunch.

No, VikingLS – I am saying that it’s possible to concede the point and not agree with the rest of it. You know, “a broken clock is right twice a day,” or “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” If whites didn’t go about smearing every victim instead of just conceding the point, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Annone had my full support until she said “If whites didn’t…” Which whites? What percentage of them? Smearing every victim how? Which victim?

I believe that to talk about Trayvon Martin and George Brown in the same sentence is an insult to the memory of Trayvon Martin. George Brown’s death was a tragedy and I have no doubt his family mourns him, and maybe Officer Wilson could have handled the situation better, but after exhaustive Justice Department review under Eric Holder, the evidence showed that Brown WAS diving into the police car reaching for Wilson’s gun. Whereas, Trayvon Martin was deliberately stalked by George Zimmerman while minding his own business, which in my view negates any “self-defense” argument by Zimmerman even if Martin did turn on him eventually.

Yes, I’ve even seen a few people try to smear Philando Castile, the most obviously and totally innocent of all the high profile cases of the past couple of years. Probably most of them are “white,” although I wouldn’t put it past Sheriff David Clarke to to that either. But is it characteristic of all people in the U.S. with a congenital melanin deficiency? I’ve become quite allergic to any accusation framed in “Those people are all like that,” no matter what the demographic, and no matter what the alleged universal characteristic.

Siarlys, I disagree somewhat because the first-past-the-post model resembles Survivor, wherein even multiple tribes must band together and ally to get one across the board. The difference is that this cycle is sustained across centuries, and it eventually boils down to two tribes, with other tribes essentially acting as spoilers. Every time we have had a successful third party in our history it has signaled the decline of one of the other major parties, they often get subsumed by the new party. There are no formal agreements like what Theresa May engineered with DUP, wherein what tradeoffs being made are very clear.

In the Republican Party, for example, you have different factions but one usually gets subsumed (Libertarians) to another (the Establishment, or the Tea Party which is currently ascendant). Most Libertarians do not vote for the Libertarian Party candidate because it would essentially guarantee a conservative loss.

That said, I can see that there are revisions that we could make by changing the primary system a bit, but because there can be only one, the dynamics are fundamentally similar. Open primaries/caucuses, proportional awarding of electors, and ranked choice voting would change the way we select candidates significantly, but you’d still see some dealing between parties regarding a platform as the dust settles and you’d still have the same functional result – an amalgam of ideas on one side, and an amalgam of ideas on another, to maximize the concentration of votes.

I largely agree with you about the police situation but to me it makes little difference that one or two cop killers have been black and targeted cops, and that whites, while doing it on a much greater scale, do it because they are committing some other felony. When it comes down to it, only one of those two is being scapegoated to sell more guns.

Minorities are always the bogeyman. Donald Trump explicitly named Mexicans as rapists and criminals, that “Mexico isn’t sending their best.” It doesn’t matter if, as you so eloquently recounted, they speak the Queen’s English, they are perceived as not fully human or worthy of respect. You don’t see people talking in generalities about scary white people so as to scare people into buying guns to protect themselves. It’s dehumanizing a whole swath of people. The sad thing is that it’s as American as pie to do it, however odious it is.

It is not enough that juries no longer acquit in five minutes. That they still acquit tells you about this country. It’s hard to believe that they will acquit on all counts, including all the lesser included offenses, but they do. The tacit and not-so-tacit approval of our countrymen is the most disheartening.

“No, VikingLS – I am saying that it’s possible to concede the point and not agree with the rest of it. You know, “a broken clock is right twice a day,” or “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” If whites didn’t go about smearing every victim instead of just conceding the point, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Whites” don’t do that. You can make those accusations about conservatives if you want, but blaming that on race is itself racist.

It’s also a lie. You might be able to make the case that white conservatives don’t take police treatment of minorities seriously (though as a white conservative I assure you, I do) but whatever failings white liberals have, suggesting they don’t care about police brutality against minorities because of their race is just beyond repugnant.

You should be ashamed, but you won’t be. You’re a racist and racists always hide behind the conviction that they’re misunderstood.

Calm down Viking. (That’s my opinion of course, its not binding on you, a caveat I note for purposes of courtesy, albeit I know you are capable of acting on it without anyone’s permission).

I don’t always agree with Annone’s conclusions, but there is some long history of very real empirical experience behind her passion. I argued with the notion that “white people” share any particular attitude in common too, but telling her “you should be ashamed” is kind of like telling Trump voters how stupid they are.

It IS frustrating that a jury would acquit Officer Yanez of all lesser charges. I don’t think that “racism” is the answer at this point. Juries are bound by detailed instructions from judges. I think a small change in emphasis, entirely consistent with the law, would open up some very appropriate grounds for conviction. But I don’t expect Philando Castile’s mother to be calm and rational when she sees that twelve of her peers failed to convict the man who negligently (at the least) killed her son.

I mentioned before a friend of mine who graduated from Alabama State who is incensed that so many “white” fellow citizens could vote for an obvious racist like Trump. (And he’s a hard line law and order man). I tried to explain the same things I’ve said here about the many reasons people voted for Trump — including some who twice voted for Barack Obama. But I wasn’t making any headway. Noah_172 simply dismissed his opinion by intoning “He’s wrong.” Well, maybe he is. But a lot of people are willing to dismiss Trump voters on the grounds “They’re wrong.” The fact is, what our fellow citizens think and why they think that way is important.

Its important that a lot of people I respect would vote for Trump, and its important that a lot of people I respect consider a vote for Trump to be evidence that a majority of “white” people remain racists at heart. Now, from there we have a long, difficult conversation to embark on, and it requires tact, courtesy, and refraining from premature adjectives, while understanding that nobody else is obligated to just drop what they’re thinking because someone else differs.

I mentioned before a friend of mine who graduated from Alabama State who is incensed that so many “white” fellow citizens could vote for an obvious racist like Trump. (And he’s a hard line law and order man). I tried to explain the same things I’ve said here about the many reasons people voted for Trump — including some who twice voted for Barack Obama. But I wasn’t making any headway. Noah_172 simply dismissed his opinion by intoning “He’s wrong.”

You wrote that your friend’s antipathy to Trump was based on “feelings” rather than any particular policy proposal or action Trump had taken in the past. (And you imply that your friend may actually agree with Trump on the substance of crime politics.) Accusations of racism, no matter how groundless, are what every Republican, including some very un-Trumpian ones (McCain, Romney), has had to deal with since the 1960s. Now you even admit that your friend wouldn’t listen to reason — from you, a socialist who doesn’t care for Trump. (By reason, I mean that tens of millions of people voted for Trump for policy reasons, or “time for a change” [why they may have voted Obama in 2008], same as how any other candidate gets votes.)

No, I am going to stand by that. People who openly make accusations based on race should be ashamed of themselves. I explained why, and I stand by that. This country is full of white people, particularly, but not exclusively on the left, that have been very sympathetic to and supportive of complaints about police brutality against minorities.

Viking, I figured you would. But I believe your choice of adjectives is misguided. Anonne, sometimes you use the word “whites” without qualification, so Viking could be forgiven for thinking you mean “all” whites when you didn’t say “some” whites” or “racist” whites or “those who continue to choose to think of themselves as white.”

Noah_172, you continue to miss the point entirely. I think my friend is wrong. I think those who voted for Trump because he was the lesser evil are wrong. I think Hillary was the lesser evil — although I almost threw up at having to vote for her.

BUT, when we are dealing with being citizens of a common country to vote in the same elections to fill the same offices which hold real power to govern, at least in those areas the constitution confers jurisdiction over, what our fellow citizens think and feel, what resonates with them, what motivates them, is relevant.

It is even relevant that there are different reasons different people are racist.

So, it is a matter of concern to me that a significant number of voters in my home state who voted for Obama and for Sanders considered it best to vote for Trump. I’m glad that the in-state press and some polling organizations did some solid ground work finding out first hand what led people to make that decision.

Similarly, I give some weight to the fact that people I know well, respect, like, view Trump’s election as a symptom that there are a lot more racist “white” people than they had previously thought.

Now these are people who work with “white” people every day, have long-established working relations, get a lot of productive work done together, so it is a bit of an abstraction. As often happens with group characterization, its not “the white people I work with” but the nebulous “those white people” somewhere over the horizon.

Which of course is also true of the way you write about “black people.”

You can’t realign voters or form a new coalition without understanding what motivates people you need to come to terms with who don’t see things exactly your way. During the early days of Reconstruction, a lot of impoverished white southern yeoman told Republican Party organizers, “We are not so much for the Negro as against the Planter.” Well, fine. That’s a sound basis for a pragmatic alliance. Friends and comrades are actually two different things.